Customer balance total owing but no outstanding invoices

Hello, @Kirsten26.

It's great having you here in the Community. I hope you're enjoying the day so far. 

I wanted to clarify, is the customer in question supposed to have an open balance and you're not finding the invoice, or is the open balance a mistake? 

While I await your response, let's try some basic troubleshooting to the company file. It sounds like you may have data integrity issues causing the open balance to appear. Also, this can cause a missing invoice. I've included some troubleshooting steps below. 

Let's go ahead and resort to your customer balance. This helps you fix the incorrect balance showing on the lists. Here's how:
 

1. Go to the Edit menu and select Find.
2. Click on the Advanced tab.
3. From the Filter list, tap on Name.
4. Click the Name drop-down arrow, then press Ctrl+L on your keyboard.
5. Select the Include Inactive checkbox. 
6. Hit the Name drop-down arrow, then tap Re-sort List.
7. Select OK.
8. Close and reopen your company file. This ensures to reflect the changes after resorting to your company file.

If you're continuing to have issues, let's run the verify rebuild. This can help fix data-related issues on a company file. Here's how:

1. Go to the File menu.
2. Select Utilities.
3. Click Verify Data then select OK to close all windows.
4. Then, go back to the File menu.
5. Select Rebuild Data under Utilities.
6. QuickBooks will ask to make a backup before rebuilding your company file, select OK.
7. Once the rebuild is done, click OK.

I'll be sure to keep an eye out for your reply and look forward to chatting with you soon. Take care! 

Sorry I'm so slow to respond, I only work 2 days a week and sometimes this kind of thing gets pushed to the bottom of the list. Anyway, the customer should not have an open balance. As far as we know the balance is a mistake.

Hi there, @Kirsten26.

Let's make sure that the Customer Balance Summary report is filtered to All dates. This way, we can see all of your customer's balances. Here's how:

1. Go to Reports and select Customers & Receivables.
2. Click Customer Balance Summary.
3. Filter the Dates to All.

If the report still shows that there aren't any balances for that specific customer, I'd recommend following the suggested steps provided by my colleague Tori B. 

If the issue persists, repair your company file using QuickBooks File Doctor.

If your company file can’t be fixed by rebuilding the data or using the File Doctor, contact support and we’ll help you fix the file.

Let me know how it goes by adding a comment down below. Have a great day ahead. 

Is there a report that shows which payments are tied to which invoices?

Thanks for coming back, @Kirsten26.

I'll share the steps on how you can get a report that shows your invoice and payments at once. You can pull the Transaction List by Customer report. This report will let you filter to see invoices and payments associated with them.

Here's how:

1. Go to Reports at the top.
2. Select Customers & Receivables, then choose Transaction List by Customer.
3. In the report, tap the Customize Report button and then the Filters tab.
4. Search Transaction Type and pick Multiple Transaction Types from the drop-down.
5. Put a checkmark next to Invoice and Payment.
6. Click OK and then OK to close the customize page. See the attached images below.

I'm adding this article to guide you with customizing reports. Feel free to check out: Customize reports in QuickBooks Desktop.

In case you need help with other reports-related tasks, browse this link to go to the page: Create and manage reports.

Know that you're always welcome to reply to this thread anytime if you still have questions or concerns with reports. I'll be around for you. Take care and have a good one.

We can't figure out if they really owe us. All the invoices show paid. All the payments are applied in full. It gets to go to the accountant and she can work her magic and make it disappear.

Same issue tried all the fixes, customer has paid all invoices but when I go to make a payment shows a balance like the invoice is not cleared?

Same issue did all those things did not work.  Any other suggestions?

I have a similar problem, and it occurred to me that the "Total" amount indicated is equal to the "sales receipt" transactions for which no separate payment amount appears. So yes, getting a report which only includes "invoice" and "payment" transactions solves this for me. But I still find it strange that Sales Receipts result in a balance at first glance. 

I have no further insight into this

Customer paid a portion of the invoice and payment link shows -0- balance.  QuickBooks shows a balance owing.

I see the importance of seeing the remaining balance of your invoice, jan552. Let me help you with this matter. 

Since you've mentioned that your customer already paid the portion yet it shows 0 balance, I suggest pulling up a report named A/R Aging Detail report for you to see if there are open transactions with that specific person. 

Here's how: 

1. Go to the Reports menu and click the Vendors & Payables dropdown. 
2. Choose the A/R Aging Detail report. 
3. Press the Customize report. 
4. In the Display tab, under the Columns search bar, enter Name then tick it. Once done, click OK.
5. In the Filter tab, type the Name in the filter search bar and press that. 
6. Click the dropdown above the Active status, 
7. Select the specific customer, and press OK.

You may refer to this article to learn how to create a receive payment as you see the open invoice in the said report so that it will now apply to your invoice transaction: How to use payment links in QuickBooks Desktop. 

Let me know in the comment section if you have other concerns or additional information as you perform the steps above. We're always here to offer further assistance. 

For those using Quickbooks Desktop for Mac I have had this problem on multiple occasions and its the result of file corruption. That's what the support steps above aim to address. Unfortunately they don't always work and I have had to delete and recreate invoices in order to correctly apply payments so that there is no lingering customer balance or overpayment.

I believe that on least one occasion this is the result of payments being applied to customers labeled in the system as "inactive." Good luck.

This is usually do to a corrupt transaction.  I recommend you run a verification and rebuild.  If that does not fix it, you'll need to do some investigative work to find the corrupt transaction.  In my client's case, it was a corrupt credit memo that totaled $39.99, yet QB was seeing it for customer balance total purposes as $1,239.99.  Once I deleted this credit memo and recreated it, my customer balance total in the customer center matched the customer's true open balance.